An Epic Journey

I Am Not a Robot

By Lois Hewitt

Looking up an article online the other day and I made a startling discovery. The article I was reading was written by AI.

Many years ago, Mike and I wrote articles for Yahoo. Filler articles like the history of ball caps and 100 uses for an onion.

Many times we had to do several rewrites to get it up to their standards. Now AI just writes articles somehow.

I do not pretend to understand Artificial Intelligence. But I have to assume the human factor is cut out of the equation.

I read an article, probably written by AI, about a small local newspaper that uses all AI. How does the human interest part of writing present itself?

I am sure all the words are correct, all the spelling is immaculate and there are no foibles in these articles

My writing, on the other hand, is populated with misused or extra words, my spelling is better but not perfect and I still always do two spaces after a period. I’m a writing disaster. But I always try for transparency and brutal honesty.

So where does AI leave real people writers? I think that remains to be seen. It is probably less expensive and more productive. But is that always the necessary end result.

Now I’m not just talking about me. If I were to live off the income I make from writing, well I would be homeless if truth be told. But many others do make an income by writing about every topic you can think about.

What about people who just love to write? Who breathe and eat writing? Will they be pushed out of the market by some computer generated writing machine? I don’t know.

I do know one thing, genuine human emotion and experiences cannot possibly be duplicated by a machine.

The misspelled word adds humanity to the writing. The accidental word left in after the 29th revision is a mark of humanity. The sly twist of a phrase is a mark of humanity.

As our world grows less and less personal, I want to hang on tightly to real person writing. Not necessarily my own, although I am honored to have had the chance to write anything, but I rely on other people’s experiences to rein light into my life.

I do not know what the future will bring but as long as I can, I will read real people’s writings.

My writings will continue to be full of grammatical errors and misstepped ideas and word formations. But it will be real and honest.

Especially as I write about how Jesus saved me from my own folly and ignorance. How can a machine experience forgiveness undeserved or love unconditional? How can a machine deal with regret, remorse and, ultimately, redemption .

That is all the human experience. Let us not forget the importance of the humaness as life continues to evolve technologically (thank goodness for spell check though).

The human experience is ours, we own it…good or bad. No machine or program can reveal that. Real words from real people, that changes lives.